


High Peaks

by jazzonia



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Language, New York, POV Alternating, Romance, Weekend trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzonia/pseuds/jazzonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harvey doesn't show up for work one day. When Mike finds out his boss has taken an indefinite leave of absence, he doesn't think twice before setting off to track him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Peaks

**Author's Note:**

> The first three paragraphs reference the death of a parent and may be skipped if necessary.
> 
> Set between seasons one and two.

Harvey’s father died on a Sunday. 

At the time it hadn’t ever occurred to Harvey to take a stance on whether Sunday was the first or the last day of the week, but in the hours after he got the phone call, he couldn’t think about much else. Was this a terrible end to an unremarkable week, or the foreboding beginning to a new one? Was it the last family-related tragedy he would have to endure, or the dawn of the new era of After Dad’s Death?

It’s both, really, if Harvey is being honest with himself. He’s pretty firmly set on Sunday as the beginning of the week—so sue him, he’s a traditionalist—but that Sunday four years ago changed him. He’s a different man now from the one that heard from an emergency room nurse that the man who raised him was gone. He’s got Marcus, and he loves the damn kid, but they see each other so infrequently that New York and Colorado might as well be on different continents. His mother’s been out of the picture for, well, going on two decades. Harvey is not orphaned, per se, but unmoored. Untethered. A free agent, no family ties, no obligations, no one to bring his dates home to meet. 

So when he sees an unknown number calling his cell, his stomach sinks, remembering another sticky summer day when a call like this changed his life. The dread is instinct, a memory, nothing more—because Harvey’ll be damned if he can think of a single soul in the 518 area code that would need to talk to him. But he answers, and listens, and forty minutes later is on the highway with the city in his rearview mirror.

***

“Mike!” 

“I know, I’m sorry, there’s construction on the FDR so I had to take a detour, and—“

Donna raises a hand, and Mike knows better than to keep talking. “You can make it up to me later. This is from Harvey.”

Mike glances behind her at Harvey’s empty office, then down at his watch. Nearly 8 am, so Harvey should be prepping for the—

“Molloy deposition. Today, 8:30. You’re going to take this one on your own.” Donna handed him the folder Mike had left on Harvey’s desk last night, and Mike knew by the crisp pages that Harvey hadn’t even picked it up. 

“But he said yesterday I couldn’t depose an anemic Russian child czar, much less the CEO of Molloy Metals.”

Donna gives him a tight smile. “Well congratulations, you’ve moved up in the world. They’re always early, so better get those sweat stains taken care of.”

Mike grabs the folder. “Hey, it’s like 85 degrees out already. This weather is gonna be great for Labor Day this weekend, but not great for the biking.”

“I know you have a spare shirt in your desk. Now go on, depose like you mean it.” Donna gives him a delicate wave and turned back to her computer.

“All right, all right.” Mike starts down the hallway, but then says, “Hey, is everything okay?”

Donna looks up, expression neutral but eyes betraying her uncertainty. “I’ll let you know.”

***

Mike kicks ass at the deposition, of course, because if that d-bag thought Pearson Hardman didn’t know about his Cayman accounts he was fooling himself. He stops by his desk afterward intending to grab his wallet and go buy Donna a mocha, but sees that she’d already been by to drop off more case folders—and wait, no, not any case folders, these are _seriously fucking cool_ cases that Mike never thought Harvey would let him near. He sits down, coffee run forgotten, and says a silent than-you to whatever gods made Harvey so generous. 

Four cases’ worth of super-fucking-sharp research later the office has all but emptied for the night, and Mike _seriously_ cannot wait to get an office of his own, ‘cause this windowless bullpen thing is messing with his internal clock. He leans back and rubs his eyes. Weird that Harvey hasn’t swung by at all, or called him up to gloat about whatever deal or client or, like, hot dog vendor he’d closed so far today. Also weird that Louis has left him alone? Mike remembers overhearing something about a class-action lawsuit Louis wanted to foist onto him, but whatever, he is _not_ gonna push his luck.

“Mr. Ross?”

“Oh, fu—funny seeing you here, Ms. Pearson, down by the juniors and all.”

Jessica laughs, and it's somehow  _aggressive_ , and Mike’s seriously gotta learn how to do that. “You’d better work on that, Mr. Ross. Jumpiness is unbecoming.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, going for contrite but coming across more like the chastised child that he feels like when on the receiving end of one of Jessica’s Looks. 

“Excellent. I came to tell you that you may make use of the junior associates for however long this lasts, should your workload necessitate it.” 

“Uh, thank you. That’s very… very generous.” Mike has no fucking idea what she was talking about, but hello, Corporate Underling Lesson #1: Never appear to be as clueless as you are.

“Best of luck, Mr. Ross. I trust you will make every effort to minimize the impact of this disruption on the rest of the firm.” She gives him one of those smiles, the You Will Regret the Day You Were Born Should You Defy Me smile, and sweeps out, leaving Mike alone and kinda clueless in the bullpen.

He waits a moment to make sure she’s gone, then mutters, “Well, shit.” 

***

Only 7:30 pm, not too late to call Donna, so Mike hides in the men’s bathroom and hisses as soon as she picks up, “Donna, what does Jessica know that I don’t?”

She sighs, and Mike doesn’t need her in front of him to picture the withering look she’s no doubt wearing. “Harvey has taken an indefinite leave of absence.”

“I—what?” Mike’s never seen Harvey take so much as a sick day. What does she mean, _indefinite_?

“He has some personal business to take care of.” She’s using her conversation-ending tone, but Mike knows that Donna of all people wouldn’t accept a line like ‘personal business’ from _Harvey_ of all people. There’s got to be something else going on.

“Well, yes, _obv_ iously there’s something else going on,” she snaps, and whoops, _must have said that out loud_. 

“Yes, Michael. You’re tired, and you get vocal when you’re tired.” Another sigh. “It’s got something to do with his dad.”

“Didn’t his dad—”

“Yes, years ago. It might be an issue with the estate. He was vague with me, which as you know is highly unusual. Frankly,” she says, her voice sliding into a quieter and more sincere register, “I’m worried. I have my sister’s baby shower tomorrow or else I’d be following him to Keene myself.”

“Keene?”

“Oh, damn, Mike, don’t tell him I told you where—”

“Say no more. It’s a long weekend, right? No one’ll be in tomorrow?”

A snort. “And miss out on the last weekend of Hamptons polo matches and Michelin-catered barbecues for the year? I think not.”

“Good. I’ll see you next week, then.”

“Mike—”

“Night, Donna.”

Mike hears nothing for a beat, but he doesn’t hang up, pausing for a moment with his eyes closed and head resting against the cool tiled wall. 

“Goodnight, Mike. Thank you.” The call disconnects, and Mike finds himself moving as if on autopilot back to his desk. Grabs his wallet, keys, laptop, spare charger, and a couple protein bars from his bottom drawer stash. Shoves it all in his bag, slings it over his shoulder, and pulls out his Blackberry to Google ‘Keene, NY.’

If he stops to think, to picture _Harvey_ of all people alone in some godforsaken mountain town— 

Keene. Population 1,105. No train station, no airport, 460 miles from where Mike stands. 

If he steps on it, he can make it before midnight.

***

Harvey had forgotten how dark the sky gets outside of the city.

His (multi-)million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline is a constellation of its own, of course, but the real night sky is so much _busier_ than he remembered. Thousands of stars, all different sizes and brightnesses and, yes, even colors. Was that bluish one Venus? He’d have to ask Mike when he got back.

 _And when will that be?_ Christ, he hopes the kid isn’t worried. The last couple days passed in a blur of activity and phone calls, none of them to Mike. But Donna would handle the logistics, and Jessica knew the broad strokes, and the kid is certainly eager to get his hands on Harvey’s caseload.

Harvey shakes his head, lips twisting into a small fond smile. _Rookie._

No more thinking about work, then. Town’s full of families enjoying their last weekend of summer—why shouldn’t Harvey treat this like a vacation, too? Warm weather, camping conditions, manual labor. People pay thousands for weekends like this.

He glances down at the deck beneath his lawn chair, boards swollen with water and jagged in places where the wind had separated them from the crossbeams. The siding is so bad he can’t bear to look at it, not to mention the _roof_. ‘Camping’ might indeed be the right way to describe the weekend—week? couple weeks?—ahead of him. 

Hurricane Irene was nothing more than a rainstorm in the city, but this far upstate it was an act of God. Harvey's neighbor called as soon as the cell service was restored to tell him that his cabin needed to be patched up  _pronto_ , before the fall thunderstorms made the damage any worse. Harvey had nearly forgotten about the place—his accountant paid the property taxes every year and that was that. And speaking of his accountant, the receipts from the Weinstein dinner needed to be filed—

Harvey lets his head thunk back against the chair. No way can he think about the job in front of him _and_ the work he left behind in Manhattan. Harvey’s a smart guy, a resourceful guy, a _successful_ guy, but being a closer means knowing exactly what you can and cannot do. And Harvey cannot think about anything outside of Essex County right now. 

Lord. Tomorrow is what, Saturday? Hopefully McDonough’s is open on the weekends. Been a decade or so since Harvey’s been in town, but he remembers well enough the very loose definitions of business hours that this town keeps. 

Closing his eyes, breathing in, Harvey tries to concentrate on that very North Country smell of pine trees and woodsmoke. The cool night air against his bare forearms, chilly even now in the dog days of August, the sudden sweep of headlights—

 _Headlights?_ He starts, sits up, shields his eyes against the distinctly out-of-place LED shine cutting through his melancholic reverie. The car pulls into his driveway— _into_ his _driveway!_ —and the engine cuts out, making him aware all over again of the dense chorus of insects heralding nighttime in the mountains. 

The headlights cut out next, leaving him blinking stupidly against their negative image. He’s on his feet, all of a sudden, aware enough of himself to notice how careless he’s become, and so quickly.

The door opens, interior light casting the driver’s silhouette into relief. Harvey frowns, squints, says, “If you’re lost there’re better people to ask than me for directions.”

“I think I found what I’m looking for,” the driver responds, and Harvey feels his clenched fists relax.

“Mike,” he breathes, and feels something in his chest collapse.

***

Mike comes to shortly after daybreak, eyes gritty and neck aching, on a green plaid couch straight out of the 1970s. He sits up and runs his hands over his hair, taking in the living room around him. Bookshelf, coffee table, hulking old TV, with a basic but tidy kitchen in the back and two doors facing off in the opposite corner. 

Mike stands, stretches, and pads over to the doors. The one nearest to the kitchen is partially open, revealing a serviceable but _very_ wood-paneled bathroom that Mike uses gratefully. After he’s washed his face and hands and smoothed his hair down, he shuts the light and pauses outside the other door. It’s probably the bedroom, and while Mike needs to talk to Harvey, he’s not sure he wants to start that conversation by waking his boss up. 

Mike leans in and holds an ear to the door, listening for any signs of movement.

“Yes, rookie?” Harvey says, and Mike spins around so fast he has to steady himself on the wall to keep from overbalancing. 

“ _Jee_ sus, Harvey. Hi. Good morning. I was just, uh, wondering where the pantry is. You know, to make coffee. Or toast. Coffee and toast! Long weekend, gotta party hard, you know.”

Harvey snorts, which, coming from this version of his boss wearing jeans and a tee shirt with ungelled hair, is _seriously weirding Mike out._  

“Your first breakfast in Keene has to be at the Noonmark Diner. It’s a rule. Clothes are on the couch—I’ll start the truck.” Harvey grabs an honest-to-god _baseball hat_ off the kitchen counter and heads outside through the screen door, leaving Mike standing confused and still kind of sleepy in the middle of the living room. 

Mike brings the clothes, which turned out to be a pair of snug jeans and a faded navy blue _Keene Valley Fire Department_ tee shirt, into the bathroom to change. He wets his fingers and runs them though his hair in an effort to smooth the bedhead, but after a glance down at his outfit—casual even for his standards—figures no one was going to comment. 

He heads back out through the living room and screened porch, down a couple creaky wooden steps, and climbs into to the well-used red pickup idling outside. 

“Glad the clothes fit,” Harvey says as he starts down the long dirt driveway leading through dense woods that Mike had negotiated, terrified, last night. “Marcus was always a skinny little bastard.”

“Your brother?” 

“Yeah, we always kept a couple changes of clothes up here.”

Mike swallows, not sure if he wants to start asking questions before coffee. 

Harvey glances over, a hint of amusement in his eyes. “Relax, kid. We’ll get to all of that.”

Mike decides to take him at his word and focuses on the scenery outside (instead of the _big fucking elephant_ in the truck, namely: _Where the fuck are we? Why did you leave work indefinitely? Why is your hair wavy and since when do you own shirts that fit so loosely?_ )

They’re deep in the Adirondacks, in a small town called Keene at least a half-hour’s drive off the thruway. It was an easy enough drive for the first 400 miles north, the space between exits stretching from one or two miles to long swaths of dark road for ten or twenty miles. Then Mike coasted off exit 30, and crept up a winding two-lane road clinging precariously to the side of a mountain. Keene seems to Mike to be just a collection of buildings on either side of that road, Harvey’s house another couple miles behind them. He doesn’t have any neighbors that Mike can see, though the difference between a footpath and a driveway seems to be very slim, so for all Mike knows there could be another village hidden back behind the trees.

“—Mike?”

“What, sorry?”

“I was saying, this is Silver Bear Road. It’s the only main road in town besides 73, which is what you came in on off the thruway.” 

“It’s like you’re in costume,” Mike blurts, looking over at him. “Sorry. I just—”

“Not exactly the corner office,” Harvey says, his voice weighty in a way that Mike can’t quite read. 

They reach the end of the road and turn back onto the empty main road, where Harvey nonetheless crawls along at 15 miles per hour. It was too dark for Mike to see anything last night, but now he soaks it all in: the tiny clapboard library, the two-pump gas station, the bright white Episcopal church, the grand old Victorian houses with sagging porches and chipped paint. They turn into one of the last shops in town, a squat white restaurant with boarded-up windows and a hand-lettered sign proclaiming it the Noonmark Diner.

“Are they under construction?” 

Harvey’s eyes widen. “No, this is from the storm.”

“What, do the winds get that bad?”

“The hurricane. Last week. Irene?”

“I thought that ended up just being a rainstorm. Little hurricane that cried wolf and all that.”

“For us in the city, maybe. But it hit them hard up here. We don’t have any power in the house, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the diner is using generators.” 

They park and climb out of the truck. Mike takes a deep breath, relishing the smell of pine trees and smoke, and Harvey smiles as he catches him at it. 

“Nothing like it, is there?” 

Mike gives a small smile and shakes his head, looking away from that strange sincere mostly-eyes smile Harvey’s wearing.

The boarded-up windows turn out to be a screened porch with an ice cream counter at one end of it. They walk into the diner itself, an aged but well-kept L-shaped place with barstools and booths off to the left and a sunny room of tables to the right. Mike lingers near a glass case of picture-perfect pies flanked by a community message board. The layers of flyers advertise fishing lessons, tutoring, cleaning services, used boats and cars, and addiction treatment programs. 

“Why if it isn’t HR!” someone says. Mike turns and watches his boss stooping to hug an older woman with a fierceness Mike thought he reserved for decimating witnesses. This image should be utterly incongruous with the version of Harvey that Mike knows, but somehow it seems exactly right. 

“ _Susan._ I’m so glad you’re all right.”

“It was a near thing, sugar-pie. Thought that old spruce was finally going to come down into my living room.”

Harvey gives a deep laugh, the like of which Mike hasn’t heard since they stood shoulder to shoulder and christened Louis’s carpet. “That thing’s been there since before either of us were born, and will last long after we’re gone.” 

“Right you are. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend here?”

Harvey beckons at him. “Susan, this is Mike. Mike, Susan. He wanted to make _toast_ at _home_ on his first day in Keene.”

Susan clucks her tongue. “Luckily you have HR here to stop you from making a mistake like that! Come right this way, boys, I’ll give you a proper Adirondack breakfast.”

They follow Susan to a table in the back corner of the restaurant, where the plywood has been removed to let in light from the meadow stretching out behind the restaurant.

“Two coffees, I bet, and you still take your eggs over medium?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Have a seat, then, and I’ll be back in a jiff.”

They sit, Harvey facing the road and Mike looking out over the back lawn. A lanky boy in a Noonmark Diner tee shirt brings them two thick mugs of coffee, and Mike smiles at him gratefully.

“Nice place,” he says after a few moments. Harvey runs his hands through his hair—he must have removed his hat when they waked in—and nods. 

“Only restaurant in town that’s lasted more than a couple years. Not much tourist traffic to sustain the fancier places, but locals come out at least once a week.”

“Did you grow up here?”

“Not exactly.” Harvey takes another long sip of coffee, as if fortifying himself, and Mike follows his lead. 

“My mother’s family is from Connecticut, so that’s where my parents moved when they were married. But my dad’s godfather grew up here, in Keene, and willed his cabin to him when he died. 

“When things got… tense between my mother and me, midway through high school, I took my new license and my dad’s old truck and spent as much time here as I could without raising too many eyebrows at school. Susan and her sister Rosie took me in, really—I didn’t know how to cook anything besides hot dogs, and I probably would’ve gotten scurvy if they didn’t feed me real meals here at the diner.”

Mike nods, rapt. Harvey talks about himself so infrequently that Mike covets every detail, and here he is learning more than he thought he’d ever hear about Harvey’s past. About Harvey’s _mom_ , even. 

“Spent every summer here since I could walk, and enough of high school that a cop once pulled me over for being on the road in the middle of a school day. He thought I was a local. I was honored.” 

“So did your dad leave you the cabin when he passed?”

“Yes. I come up here when I can, which as you know isn’t very often. But like I said, Hurricane Irene hit them pretty hard up here. Ken, who lives next door, called me Wednesday night and told me I needed to come up and take a look at the place, so I did.” Harvey sits back in his seat. He raises one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, saying, “That’s it. No boogie man you needed to rescue me from, Prince Charming.”

“I think you’re mixing your metaphors, there.” Mike swallows, unsure what to say next, but his ponderous silence is interrupted by their food: two huge oval plates loaded with eggs, sausage, bacon, home fries, biscuits, and toast. 

“Oh my god, I think this is heaven,” Mike says, eyes round. 

Harvey grins, an expression so foreign to Mike that he can’t help but stare. “Maybe that midnight drive was worth it, then?”

“Oh, abso _lutely.”_

***

 

“I don’t ever need to eat again,” Mike says, stretching his arms over his head on their way back to the truck. 

“This was fuel, Mikey! We have a roof to repair.”

“Um.” _Mikey?!_

“Up and at ‘em, kiddo. Hardware store, grocery store, cabin, roof.” 

Harvey’s not kidding—they buy plaster, tarps, sealant, and nails at a hardware store where both employees new Harvey’s name, then a weekend’s worth of groceries at a tiny general store storing its food in coolers.

“I had no idea the hurricane was this bad,” Mike says on the drive home. Downed power lines criss-cross the streets, mud from the overflowing rivers sloshes onto the sidewalks, and tree trunks show white-blond gashes where limbs had been ripped off. 

“The city seems like its own world. Easy to forget there’s a whole state up here above us.”

They drive carefully home, where in the light of day Mike sees just how serious the damage was. The roof is more plywood than shingles, and large chunks of siding are torn off as well. One of the windows has been shattered by debris, and judging by the silent refrigerator and blank clock faces, the power is still out. 

Mike flops down on the couch, enjoying the feeling of being full and warm and blissfully without anything else to do. But then he catches the red blink of his Blackberry out of the corner of his eye, and frowns. _Oh, right._ He’d left work without any notice yesterday, and even though it is only the first day of a long weekend, he knew Donna would no doubt be asking after them.

He buries the Blackberry in his bag and heads outside to help Harvey start re-siding the house.

It’s tough work. Mike is used to taking orders from Harvey, of course, but they have never involved as much lifting and sweating as they do in the midday August heat. Mike can’t help but wonder what the other associates are doing this weekend—he bets their plans involve a lot more booze and a lot less pneumatic nail gun action. 

Not that that’s a euphemism. Mike _wishes_ it were a euphemism.

Because, really—Mike sets down his nail gun, mumbles some excuse to Harvey, and heads inside for a glass of water—it’s not normal to follow your boss 400 miles into the wilderness on a hunch. It is an objective, quantitative fact that Harvey is hot as _fuck_ , but that doesn’t totally explain Mike’s willingness—hell, his _eagerness—_ to follow Harvey without question.

 _When did life get so complicated,_ Mike thinks, wedging his hands into the back pockets of his too-tight jeans, _and since when do I lie to myself about what I feel?_

‘Cause that’s the thing. Harvey is Mike’s entire world, and if Mike stops to think about it for too long, he’ll get—

“Mike! Come on, we’re nearly done with this side!” Harvey shouts from outside. 

And what can Mike do but follow?

***

His first mistake was the jeans. 

Men objectively look their best in suits, of course, but after a few years of daily besuited interactions Harvey has gotten used to the sight of Mike in bespoke linen, wool and tweed. Seeing him fill out a well-worn pair of jeans is a whole new challenge. 

He can’t do anything about having Mike here, kind and eager and sleepy on the cabin’s couch. For Harvey’s whole life Keene has been an alternate universe where he’s just a local kid, where his shirts can be too big and laugh can be too loud. Not even _Donna_ really knows what the place means to him. 

Mike, though, seems to fit in. He passed the Susan test and is proving to be decent at minor construction, bragging notwithstanding.

“Done! I am the A-Rod of siding.” Mike mimics a batter’s swing at the newly re-sided cabin.

“Cool the jets, hotshot,” Harvey says, his eye-crinkling smile undermining his chastising tone. 

“Is it time to eat? Can we go back to the diner?”

“Susan said they were only open ’til 5. They need to save on fuel for the generators.”

Mike drops his nail gun and sits down on the grass, the ground cool and soft under his sore legs. “We can grill, then. Those steaks looked pretty good.”

“And you can’t beat the we’re-out-of-power sale. Do you want to fire the grill up while I straighten up out here?” 

“On it.” Mike hauls himself up, drying his palms on the faded back pockets of those Williamsburg-tight jeans. Harvey turns abruptly around before he can take a step closer. 

 _Don’t rush this,_ he thinks, focusing instead on cleaning up the stray tools and shingles littering the lawn. He hears a triumphant whoop from the other side of the house and smells charcoal moments later. Harvey can picture the self-satisfied smile Mike is probably wearing and the content absorption to follow as he works out how to distribute the heat and fire up the coals…

_Steady._

Indoors to wash his hands and face, throw the steaks into a quick marinade, and dig some canned vegetables out of the pantry. By the time he makes it outside the grill is nice and hot; Mike grabs beers out of the cooler they picked up from the grocery storeand soon enough their dinner is ready. Harvey slides the steaks, beans, and corn onto two plates, ready to go inside, but Mike surprises him by sitting down right there on the bluestone walkway. 

And why not? It’s a nice night, good breeze, dusk settling, black flies gone with the end of summer. They chat but Harvey’s only half tuned in, the rest of his brain on some strange contented frequency that he can only seem to find in this valley.

***

“—asking for?”

“Hmm?”

Mike laughs. “What’s up with you, man? That’s only your second beer.”

Harvey looks down at the can in his hand almost as if he’d forgotten it was there. Mike doesn’t often see Harvey lost in thought—only glimpsed in the moments before Mike enters his office, or caught in the breath between Harvey getting into his car and Ray shutting the door. It’s disconcerting.

“Just tired, I guess,” Harvey says. 

“I know what you mean. Something about the fresh air… I always conked out on the subway home whenever Grammy took me up to the Bronx to climb trees in Fort Tryon Park.”

“Better to indulge your unique brand of chaos than let you get up to no good on your own?”

“Something like that. Have you ever been up to that park? It feels medieval, all the ravines and forests and rivers.” 

“Not yet. Maybe you can show me some time,” Harvey says, and that’s all it takes. Mike’s never seen him be so genuine for so long, and asking Mike to _show him something_ , to _teach_ him something, lights fires within him that Mike can’t just quench. He turns toward Harvey and closes the space between them.

They kiss, slow and warm, for long moments before Harvey gets with the program. He wraps one hand around Mike’s hip to haul him closer and brings the other to rest hesitantly against Mike’s cheek, and _wow,_ Mike did not think Harvey was capable of doing anything as tenderly as that.

Mike may or may not groan at this new contact, and may or may not yank Harvey down to lie on top of him in the grass. A shudder runs through him as he’s hit with all of these sensations at once: Harvey’s tongue in his mouth, Harvey’s warm solid body pressing down against him, Harvey rutting against his thigh. Mike, well, he hopes there’s a sexier word than _squirm_ for what he’s doing. His brain is overloaded and blissfully quiet at the same time, like the thoughts and facts and worries that are crammed into his skull had a confab with the rest of his nervous system and decided to call a truce. 

“ _Fuck_ , Harvey,” he moans, feeling—and Mike does not think this sort of thing lightly—that he could die happy right here.

***

None of this was planned. Harvey would like to make that very clear.

It's just that Mike’s intellect is impossible to ignore. His panache and courage and authenticity demand attention be paid, and Harvey is not one to ignore such a mandate. Mike had been ignored and pigeonholed by so many, for so long, and now the world sees him at Harvey’s side for the rare gift he is. Here he is, in Harvey’s hometown, deigning to use his brainpower on Harvey’s home repairs, pressing his hips up against Harvey’s—

“This wasn’t a seduction plot,” he says into Mike’s throat.

“What?” Mike says after a moment.

“Just, I didn’t lure you up here with my structural problems to ravish you in the woods.”

“No? ‘Cause there was a lot of bending and sweating involved.”

“You’re the one whose pants look like they were painted onto you!” 

“You’re the one who gave them to me!” Mike laughs, and it’s all Harvey can do not to cry out of relief and joy as their mouths meet. 

“If anything,” Mike adds after a languorous kiss, “I’d be the damsel in distress luring you in with, like, plumbing issues.”

“You think I find plunging toilets sexy?”

“I find _you_ sexy doing just about everything.”

There it is again, that collapsing feeling in his chest that Harvey felt when Mike first showed up outside the house. It felt like settling—like finding a place to land.

“Ditto,” Harvey breathes, and leans down to lick his way into Mike’s mouth. His fingers skate up Mike’s inseam, stopping short of his groin, and Mike _moans_. 

“Come the fuck on, Harvey, God, it’s been long enough—”

“Am I going to have to tell you to be quiet?” he says, smiling even as he drops into his Serious Voice. 

Mike _writhes_ , there’s no better word for it, back arching up and nails scratching down Harvey’s sides. Gooseflesh rises on Harvey’s arms as he thinks about what else he could do to render Mike so silent and pliant and open.

For now, though, he’s as impatient as Mike is. He brings his forehead down against Mike’s and finally, _finally_ runs his palm up over his straining flies. 

“Jesus _fuck_ —”

 _Double ditto_ , Harvey thinks, kissing him hard, working at the button and zip, and finally grasping the hot hard length of him. Mike _groans_ , and they’re gasping into each other’s mouths until Mike thrusts up into Harvey’s fist and comes, Harvey shuddering after him. He stays poised over Mike for a moment, his arms locked after holding him up for so long, then flops down beside him on the grass.

Their chests rise and fall in unison. Harvey throws one of his legs over Mike’s, and in his peripheral vision catches a smile flashing over Mike’s face. His left hand needs a serious cleaning, but with his right he reaches over and grasps Mike’s hand. 

Mike squeezes, and Harvey squeezes back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Keene](http://www.townofkeeneny.com/) is a real town in upstate New York, but I would advise against driving up there after dark on a Friday. Their apple crumb pie is a must for anybody passing through the high peaks region.
> 
>  
> 
> Inspired by Patrick Adams' appearance in the second season of Orphan Black. [Gratuitous screencap available for your enjoyment.](http://i.imgur.com/41G8pRd.png)


End file.
